China’s Stumbling March Toward Markets – Samuel Gregg

Few people in the mid-1960s could have predicted that this would be China ’s trajectory over the subsequent six decades .

Historians Arne Westad and Chen Jian present a more nuanced and more compelling story, one relevant to the vexed issue of how America should deal with today 's China .

They argue that China 's economic transformation was a far more complicated process than many historians or commentators realize.

Much of Westad and Chen ’s analysis focuses on the rise and fall of different players within the CCP .

Some figures were able to navigate upheaval and maintain some continuity.

Zhou Enlai was able to modulate the flux as Mao grew older, more anxious, and paranoid.

Deng and others inclined to economic liberalization were quick to suppress any suggestion that political pluralism was possible.

Since late 2012 , Xi Jinping has taken China in directions different from those of Deng .

Westad and Chen observe that China ’s gradual and often muddled embrace of change during this period is not unprecedented.

China 's history of unanticipated disruptions provides some hope that many of the problems that plague Xi 's economic policies may eventually generate a willingness to contemplate other options.